


Neither Cruel nor Cowardly

by Nemainofthewater



Series: timelord!Rip [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Doctor Who RPF
Genre: AU of Raiders of the Lost Art, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Rip Week 2019, RipFic, Swearing, doctor who - Freeform, timelord!rip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 03:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19417615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemainofthewater/pseuds/Nemainofthewater
Summary: Arthur has been having strange dreams and even stranger headaches. His day is only going to get worse when he is accosted by people claiming he is 'Rip Hunter'.AU of Raiders of the Lost Art in my timelord!Rip AU.





	Neither Cruel nor Cowardly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Rip Hunter Appreciation Week-Day 7: Free Day.  
> This...is the first time I've ever written anything like RPF (Hamilton or historical stories don't count!), and I would like to apologise to Arthur Darvill, Matt Smith, and Karen Gillan in the hope that they never ever see this. Needless to say, I have no idea how the actual human people would act, and I don't claim to: this is just for fun.
> 
> Title from the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who.

“Come on mate,” Matt said, “It’s going to go great.”

“Easy for you to say,” Arthur hissed back, “You’ve actually worked with her before! And you know that I’m shit at first impression. Oh god,” he continued, looking queasy, “She’s going to hate me. And then Moffat is going to realise that I’m a shit choice for Rory, and I’ll be back at my parents’ house, broke, watching you and her swan about on the telly.”

Matt rolled his eyes.

“Buck up,” he said, “It’s really not going to be that bad. Kezza’s great. Well. I say great, mildly terrifying, but once she gets to know you, you’ll be best friends in no time.”

Arthur swallowed nervously.

“Did you have to add the mildly completely terrifying comment?” he said weakly, raising a hand to his head. He could feel one of his migraines coming on: a golden aura was beginning to surround Matt and the pounding of his head was intensifying.

Arthur had always had the headaches, for as long as he could remember, although they had only really started getting this bad in the last few years. They made him loopy, not only causing him to see golden auras over everyone, but also making him say things. Go right up to strangers and blurt out details about them. Needless to say, it had not made him many friends. Apart from Matt. Matt, the weirdo, thought it was cool.

“I just want you to know Smith,” Arthur said, “That is this goes tits up and I die from embarrassment, you can have my guitar.”

“It won’t come to that!” Matt said brightly, clapping Arthur on the back, “Besides,” he added, “My guitar playing’s shit.”

#

To nobody’s surprise, least of all Arthur’s, he did panic when he first met Karen Gillan at the readthrough. It didn’t help that she was wearing high-heel shoes and therefore towered over him, making him panic that the only reason he had been cast was to be her short boyfriend.

Luckily, and for some unfathomable reason, she had taken one look at him and decided that she liked him. Dragged him kicking and screaming into her friendship circle, as Matt put it. The bastard. Because it meant that suddenly, there were these two people around him all the time, bursting into the small flat that he’d rented in Cardiff and dragging him out to the pub for drinks after filming. It was nice.

Of course, then he got picked up as an actual companion (companion’s companion?) for the next series and everything exploded. Suddenly, people recognised him on the street and would come up to him to ask for a picture, or his autograph. He spotted his picture on buses, and whenever he was at home in London he was torn between ducking his head to hide face and running away as fast as possible whenever he saw them. There was something inside him, a voice that said that he shouldn’t be this noticeable. That he should fade into the shadows, let the world pass him by without making a mark. Yeah, fat chance of that happening with Karen around.

Arthur stretched back out on the uncomfortable bed, and, closing his eyes, drifted off to sleep.

“Oi, Arthur!”

He groaned.

“Whazzit,” he grumbled, opening his eyes.

“Shoot’s over for the day,” Matt said, “Not that you noticed, just lying there snoring.”

Arthur sat up slowly and swung his legs off the bed. The set was meant to be an alien infirmary, and it was pretty cool if you ignored the way some of the decorations fell off if you accidentally knocked into them. Not that he’d done that.

“I don’t snore,” he said.

“Yeah, you do,” Matt said, “Could hardly hear myself over the noise. Tell him Kezza.”

Karen rolled her eyes, and punched Matt’s shoulder. “Stop teasing him,” she said, “Save it for this evening.”

“Oh god,” Arthur said, “What are we doing this evening?”

Both Matt and Karen had matching grins on their faces: “Karaoke!” Karen said, “We’ve managed to get Hugh and Lily to agree to come out with us.”

“We’re having a competition,” Matt informed him, “Team Tardis against Team Black Spot. Winner pays for all the drinks, so get ready Arthur because I am planning on draining the bar.”

“Neither of you can sing,” Arthur said despairingly.

“Can too!” Karen said, faux-outraged before dissolving into giggles.

“I’ll have you know,” Matt said, eyebrows wriggling up and down on his enormous forehead, “That what we lack in pitch we make up in, in-”

“Enthusiasm?” Arthur said.

Matt pointed at him, bouncing up and down in excitement.

“Exactly!”

Arthur had no idea how he managed to have so much energy. While Arthur got sleepy and Karen got grumpy, Matt just got more and more hyper the more tired he got. Honestly, it was pretty exhausting, and he exchanged a Look with Karen. They wouldn’t change him for the world though: he just wouldn’t be Matt otherwise.

“You two go ahead,” Arthur said, “I just want to find Stephen and apologise for sleeping through my alarm this morning.”

Matt and Karen exchanged a Look of their own, and then Karen walked off.

“You alright?” Matt asked, “Still having those dreams?”

“I just overslept,” Arthur said, though apparently it was unconvincingly because Matt’s look of concern didn’t abate. He sighed: “Fine. Yes, the nightmares are getting worse. I just- it’s all these dreams about death and destruction, and there’s this woman in it and I keep watching her die over and over again-”

Oh. He was crying.

“Hey, hey,” Matt was saying to him, arms around his shoulders, “It’s ok, just let it all out, yeah?”

They stayed like that for a few minutes, before Arthur reluctantly pulled away, sniffing slightly.

“Sorry,” he said, smiling weakly, “I think it’s just the pressure, yeah? I mean, Christ we’ve been so busy recently and Neil Gaiman’s episode is next, and wow he’s a big deal?”

“Arthur,” Matt said, “Did you get any sleep at all last night?”

“A couple of hours,” Arthur said, eyes fixed on the floor, “It’s just- the dreams. They’re not all bad though,” he smiled weakly, “Some of them are these fast-paced, time-travelling adventures: sometimes I think I should take them to Stephen, pitch them as an episode or something.”

Matt didn’t take the bait, frowning at him: “And I take it the headaches are getting worse.”

“Yeah, I , how did you know?”

Matt rolled his eyes. “I’m not completely unobservant,” he said, “You’ve been taking your pills more often.”

Arthur shrugged.

“Not like they’re helping that much,” he admitted, “It doesn’t help that I’m allergic to most types of commercial painkillers. The auras are getting worse too. It’s like, everyone I see is just-covered in this gold fog. And I don’t know what it means.”

He sighed: “Well, nothing I can do about it. I’m sure once the stress of filming is over then I can do something about it?”

“Arthur-” Matt said.

“No, seriously don’t worry about it,” Arthur said, brushing him off, “Let’s just go out and have a nice night, yeah? Win you those drinks.”

#  
  


The first time it happened, they were in Spain which was standing in for the Wild West, and Arthur had a moment of intense vertigo.

“Oh shit,” was the only thing he said, before toppling over in a dead faint.

‘Heatstroke’ was the general consensus among when he came to, heatstroke and the amount of sangria that everyone had consumed in a rush of ‘that’s what you do in Spain, right?’ the night before. He agreed, laughed it off and good-naturedly accepted the teasing and the numerous bottles of sun cream that kept turning up in his trailer.

He didn’t tell anyone the real reason. He didn’t tell anyone about the wave of déjà-vu he had experienced, looking at the facsimile of the Wild West, about the way that he had felt the Earth turn beneath his feet.

He definitely didn’t tell anyone that he could still feel it, even now, turning away beneath him.

#

It was a perfect scene to end it on, really. The three of them walking into the TARDIS, together for one last adventure. Nothing lasted forever, Arthur knew that, but Doctor Who had been such a large part of his life that he wasn’t sure how he was going to go back to pre-Who life. It was something special. And now he and Karen were leaving Matt behind and going off to their own separate things, and all he could think about was that one day, filming on location in Wales where he thought they were all going to get frostbite, and Karen had stuck her (freezing) hands down the back of his jacket, causing him to trip over an inconveniently placed rock and sending Stephen into a mild meltdown until it turned out that he has only twisted his ankle and was still ok to film.

What was even going to do? Move on he supposed. His agent had received an interesting phone call from ITV: something about a detective series. He wouldn’t be able to read the scripts beforehand which was always a worrying sign, but on the other hand David Tennant had already been cast and he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work with _two_ doctors…

“Arthur,” Karen said, poking his side. Her eyes were still red, and she was sniffling slightly, but honestly over the past week that had just become the new normal: Arthur absent-mindedly took a tissue out of his pocket and handed it over.

“Thanks,” Karen said, “But I wanted to ask you: have you ever seen those guys around here before? They’re acting…weird.”

Arthur looked up. There was were two people looking at him, a guy and a girl around his own age. One of them was holding a sleek metallic device that was beeping irritatingly. Honestly, it looked like something form the props department, and Arthur absently wondered whether they were some of those rabid fans who had managed to bypass security and were collecting souvenirs.

“Oh shit, they’re coming this way,” Arthur said, unwittingly making eye contact before glancing to the side, “Should we call security?”

“Yeah,” Karen said, “I think we should. I’ll go get them: you distract them.”

“Wait, what-” Arthur said, but it was too late. She was already gone. Leaving him to deal with the rapidly approaching intruders. Desperately he looked around for back-up, but everyone else had left for the day: he and Karen had only stuck around so long because they were waiting for Matt.

The girl was holding something in her hands: a photo? Arthur relaxed slightly: maybe they were just overenthusiastic fans.

“Captain Hunter?” she said, and she was American: not common in Cardiff but not unusual, especially not after Torchwood had become more popular.

“No, sorry,” Arthur said despite the odd question, “I’m Arthur Darvill. I’ve never heard of this Captain Hunter.”

There was no recognition in either of their eyes when he said his name, and he felt relieved. Although, what sort of fans didn’t recognise his name? He wasn’t being arrogant: although Matt and Karen were generally better known, he didn’t play an insignificant role on the show. His name came third in the opening credits, for Heaven’s sake!

The guy waved the metallic thing in his general direction, and it started to beep even more urgently and began to emit a high-pitched squeal.

“That’s definitely him,” he said, and he was American as well, “The energy reading I’m getting are off the charts. Exactly the sort of thing Sara said we’d find, especially since he’s not wearing his suppressors.”

They both glanced down to look at his wrists, and Arthur fought the urge to hide his hands behind his back.

“Look,” he said, trying to remain calm in the face of what could only be mentally unstable people, “I think you should leave now. If you go quietly, there’ll be no need to involve the police in any of this-”

The guy reached out toward him and said: “Wait, Captain Hunter you don’t understand-” but Arthur didn’t get to learn what he apparently ‘didn’t understand’ because as soon as his hand brushed Arthur’s bare arm, _something_ rushed through his mind and he fainted.

#

“…course it’s him! The levels of Artron energy are off the chart-”

“But Arthur Darvill! Rory Williams Arthur Darvill! Doctor Who’s Arthur Darvill, he’s an actual person. I remember seeing him at Comic Con, there’s no way that he’s Rip-”

“Can you not see the evidence staring you in the face! Is it possible that you never learnt to read a heart monitor-”

“Hey, maybe we shouldn’t get so personal-”

“Dr Palmer, Professor Stein, I believe that Captain Hunter is waking up.”

Arthur opened his eyes with a groan, squinting around him. He was sat in some sort of reclining chair in a small, sterile room.

“What happened?” he whispered.

“Ah,” said one of the men in front of him, “I’m honoured to meet you Mr Darvill, my name is Ray Palmer, and this is my associate, Martin Stein. You were meeting with some of our colleagues, and I’m afraid that you passed out: naturally they were concerned about you and brought you back to our headquarters to check you out.”

He was American. Another one. Arthur immediately yelped, struggling to his feet as quickly as possible, hoping to get out of, wherever he was, before they did weird experiments on him. Or something like that.

“What did you do to me?” he demanded, “Have you hurt Karen? Where am I?” He closed his eyes, trying to control his breathing: “Oh god,” he said to himself, “Please don’t let this be some weird sex thing…”

“Easy,” said another voice, closer than he was expecting, and Arthur’s eyes snapped open to see the older man, Stein?, was coming toward him, hands held out in the universal sign of ‘we come in peace’. Well, Arthur wasn’t convinced.

“We aren’t going to do anything to you,” Stein said, talking in a low, soothing voice Arthur really appreciated, despite the fact he knew he was being manage, “We just want to take a few measurements, show you some things?”

And then the fear was back.

“Please don’t,” he whimpered.

“I’m sorry,” Stein said, “But this is important.”

Carefully and gently, he reached out and took Arthur’s wrist in his, clipping a blue cuff around it. Immediately, screens came to life, as well as a whirring, blue headpiece thing suspended above him.

“What the fuck!” Arthur said.

“It’s not good news,” a female voice said, and he looked around wildly, trying to figure out who was speaking, “It looks like his entire neural architecture was changed. Almost completely restructured.”

“Almost?”

“There are signs that it is changing back.”

“I have no idea what you people are talking about,” Arthur said, “Please I just want to go home. My friends are waiting for me. I won’t tell anyone about this, I promise, just please. Let me go.”

The two men exchanged inscrutable looks.

“How are your headaches?” Palmer asked.

Arthur froze, fear creeping up his spine. How could they know about that? It wasn’t exactly public knowledge.

“I-I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“I think you do. And the auras, right? When you look at people.”

“Anyone could find this out,” Arthur said weakly.

“Maybe,” Palmer said, “But I bet you haven’t told anyone about the things that you see when you look at them. Their past, present, and future.”

“This is ridiculous,” Arthur said, his heart racing, “I don’t know where you’re getting your information from, but I’m not crazy.”

“I never said you were.”

Palmer was tapping at something, a tablet, maybe? He flipped it over and showed it to Arthur. It had a picture on it, one of those X-rays or something, a black and white photo, the sort he had only ever seen on tv. It was a scan of someone’s chest, only…there were two hearts.

“Haha,” Arthur said nervously, “Is this a prank then? Is this Matt’s idea? Or was it Karen, I knew that I couldn’t trust her sense of humour.”

“No, it isn’t a prank- wait. Matt _Smith_? And Karen _Gillan_? Could you introduce me?”

Stein rolled his eyes: “Not the time, Raymond,” he said.

“Rip,” he said gently, “These are your scans.”

“That’s not my name,” Arthur said, but there was a sinking, creeping feeling inside of him. Because…Rip Hunter. It was familiar. It was the name that was shouted in his dreams. Usually just before something went terribly, terribly, wrong. Or exploded. Sometimes both.

He swallowed. “Am I a prisoner?” he asked nervously.

“No, of course not,” Stein said, but there was something in his eyes that made Arthur nervous, “But I do recommend that you stay here and get checked out. With your…unique physiology, and the fact that you haven’t worn your suppressors for a little over three years I’m worried about side effects.”

Arthur…wasn’t going to touch that. He felt as if he were talking in circles, going round and round and round. Because they would never believe he wasn’t this…Rip.

“If I’m not a prisoner,” he said politely, “I’d like to leave, please.”

The men exchanged another look.

“Of course, Ri-Mr Darvill. But before you go, would you care for a tour of our ship?”

“What? I. Yes. Fine.”

He didn’t really care about what he was agreeing to: anything to get him out of here more quickly. Even if it meant making vague, approving noises at whatever cardboard spaceship they had managed to cobble together.

He stumbled when he got off the bed, and both men jerked forward like they wanted to help him but thought better at the last moment. Good. The pounding in his head was getting worse with each passing minute, and all he wanted to do was go home, take his pills, and fall asleep.

“Lead on,” he said, waving his hand in front of him.

#

Ok, he had to admit that the set that they had designed was pretty impressive. It must have cost a fortune: knocking on the walls they were actually made of metal, not just polystyrene stray-painted to look like metal. It was possible that they had spent more money on this than the beeb did on Doctor Who, although considering the budget they were allocated, that didn’t actually mean much.

He trailed his hands over the items ‘Rip’s’ office: there were numerous mementoes and trinkets and all kinds of book, mixed in with metallic objects that beeped at him whenever he touched them. The mixture of historical and futuristic was brilliant, he admitted to himself. Looking more closely at the shelves, he frowned. There were picture frames, dozens of them. He…recognised the people in them. There was a dark-haired woman and a tow-haired boy in one of them, grinning widely at the camera and Arthur felt a sharp pain in his head. They were the figures that haunted his nightmares.

Shaking his head to clear it, and ignoring the shiver that ran down his spine, he turned his attention to the other pictures. He immediately picked out Palmer and Stein, as well as his own face; but with a well-groomed beard and hair that was neatly parted instead of his normal ‘just-rolled-out-of-bed’ aesthetic. He was wearing something that looked like a cross between a Tenth Doctor and a Malcolm Reynolds cosplay, and he looked…he looked happy. Had they photoshopped him in? Was this their friend ‘Rip’, and he was just a doppelgänger? This was getting too weird. He needed to get out of here.

He stepped back and- “Can you hear that?” he asked his chaperones absently. There was a tugging in his head, maybe a voice singing?

“Hear what?” Palmer said.

“The. Er. Never mind.”

Maybe he was going crazy? He knelt slowly, and feeling around the seams in the floorboard managed to open a secret cubbyhole. How had he done that?

“What is that?” Palmer asked, leaning forward.

Arthur ignored him. Reaching in, he removed a plain box. Hands trembling, he opened it to reveal what looked like a piece of wood, broken off at one end.

“Astonishing,” Stein breathed, “Is that?”

“A fragment of the Spear of Destiny?” Palmer replied, “It looks like it. Rip man, who knew you had it in you?”

Arthur ignored them, not even bothering to protest that he wasn’t Rip. The fragment: it was calling to him. He reached into the box and touched it-

#

“Bollocks,” Rip said, “What the hell happened to my head and who do I need to kill?”

“Rip?” Martin said cautiously, “Is that you?”

“Who else would it be,” Rip snapped, and then the memories of the last three years came flooding back.”

“Bloody buggering fuck,” he said, “Yes, it is me. More me than I have been for a long time.” He sighed. “How long has it been for you?”

“A few months,” Martin said, “We’ve been keeping busy. In fact, we’ve been trying to keep the Longinus medallion out of the Legion of Doom’s hands.”

“The Legion of Doom?” Rip asked.

“Damien Darkh, Malcolm Merlyn and an unknown Speedster. Don’t ask about the name,” Martin said.

“An unholy trinity indeed,” Rip said, carefully placing the shard back into its case and replacing it in its hiding place. He sighed in relief when the box snapped shut: it was lead lined and one of the only things that could quieten the fragment’s whispers. They had only got louder since the accident, and he was rather out of practice shielding his mind from them. Speaking of which…

“Did you manage to pick up my suppressor by any chance?” he asked.

“You mean the one that you abandoned before touching the Time Drive? Again?”

Rip raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Ray, who sighed and said: “Fine, yes we did, but I’m not sure how much help it’s going to be. From the scans Gideon took earlier, it looks like you’ve got much, much worse.”

“Ah well,” Rip said, “Couldn’t be helped. I needed a way for you to find me once I’d touched the Time Drive. All of space and time is rather a large haystack to search through.”

“And you couldn’t have, I don’t know, not touched it?” Ray said, “You’re so lucky the others aren’t here yet: I’m pretty sure Mick wants to punch you for the whole self-sacrificing bullshit thing. I know that Sara does. Why didn’t you just put yourself in stasis anyway? Or even wait until you’d be retrieved: it’s not like you would have got old and died before we rescued you.”

Rip shook his head: “It was too dangerous,” he said simply, “I knew that Darkh at least was already looking for the Spear of Destiny. If I had stayed on the Waverider, he would have assumed that I kept it with me, or he could have interrogated me for information on its whereabouts. Making sure that nobody, not even I, could access the memories was the safest course of action.”

“And leaving the spear fragment on the Waverider?” Martin asked?

“Misdirection,” Rip said, “Darkh would logically think that I would take it with me when I fled the ship. He would never think that I could give up control of its whereabouts.”

Rip smiled, “More fool him. He doesn’t realise that the spear has more guardians than he could possibly imagine.”

“It doesn’t work as well if we don’t know we’re guarding it!” Ray said.

“Ah,” Rip said, “But I had faith in you. Faith that you would find me and, even if you didn’t and I lived out the rest of my days in ignorance, faith that you would be exemplary protectors of a fragment of the Spear of Destiny.”

Ray frowned. “Fine,” he said, “I accept your reasoning, but I still don’t forgive you.”

“That’s…more than fair,” Rip said, “Is there anything that I can do to make it up to you?”

A slow, wide grin spread across Ray’s face and Rip had the distinct feeling that he had walked right into a trap.

“Well,” Ray said, “there is one thing…”

#

“Arthur?” Karen said, opening her door and staring out into the night, “Arthur where were you? We were so worried-”

“You were worried,” came a shout from further inside her house, “I thought he-d just got drunk and wandered off!”

“You’re just a liar Matt,” Karen yelled back.

“I’m sorry to have worried you, Kezza,” Rip said, “Things got-complicated. But I’d be happy to explain. Inside.”

Karen narrowed her eyes.

“And who are these people?”

Behind Rip, the rest of the shifted: Ray and Jax practically vibrating in place with restrained excitement, Sara playing it cool, Mick clutching an old promotional picture of Karen, Martin with a mulish look on his face (he’d always preferred Tennant). At the back, and hopefully partially hidden, Nate and Amaya stood, not quite sure what all the fuss was about but willing to go along with it anyway.

“They’re my family,” Rip said, “Or, well, most of them are. And I would very much like for you and Matt to meet them.”

“Hmm,” Karen said, unconvinced, but she swung her door further open: “Well then, I suppose you’d better come in.”

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe it's the end of Rip Week! Thank you everyone who's been reading, commenting, and leaving Kudos, you have no idea how much I appreciate it :)
> 
> And, last but not least, may I just say: BINGO!  
> I am on Tumblr as [Nemainofthewater ](https://nemainofthewater.tumblr.com)


End file.
